Published: 12:00 AM, Thu Aug 05, 2010
Memories help fuel Fayetteville Christian coach Henrickson
By Kevin Minogue
Staff writer
The 1981 North Carolina 4-A state championship game.
Terry Sanford vs. South
Mecklenburg.
27-14.
The memories still sting Sam Henrickson like the cold of that fall evening.
A four-year starter on the offensive line at Terry Sanford, Henrickson and the Bulldogs saw their undefeated season snapped that night in Charlotte.
Now, not a day goes by that the new Fayetteville Christian School head coach doesn't think about the play that could have kept it intact.
After receiving the opening kickoff, the Bulldogs tore down the field, ultimately pushing inside the South Mecklenburg 5-yard line on a dive play behind Henrickson.
But as Henrickson hopped up, ready to make the final push over the goal line on the next play, he found his facemask swinging like an open gate in a wintry breeze.
"It was so cold that the clips on my facemask shattered. So I'm sitting there with my facemask hanging down, and in an attempt not to get a penalty, I ran off the field to get somebody in for me," Henrickson said.
"Well, they didn't get somebody in fast enough and didn't call a timeout."
Delay of game, 5-yard penalty.
"Next thing I knew, we threw an interception."
South Mecklenburg then marched down the field to score, turning the game on its head.
"It changed the whole game, at least to me it did," Henrickson said.
Terry Sanford went on to lose, and to this day, Henrickson says he still reviews his facemask folly in his mind, so much so that he knows exactly what he should have done differently.
"I think about it all the time, that one play," Henrickson said.
"And if I had to do it over again, I would have gone to the umpire and told him to call an equipment timeout. But when you're a kid, in a game like that, with 10,000 people looking at you."
The rest is history.
Henrickson's last memory of high school football is one he'd like to forget, but there's plenty more that he'll use as valuable tools as he begins his high school coaching career at Fayetteville Christian.
Most of what he learned came from Len Maness, the legendary Terry Sanford coach who took the Bulldogs from mediocre to outstanding in Henrickson's time at the school.
By following the Maness playbook, Henrickson hopes to do similar things with the Warriors program, which won just one game a season ago.
"He really loved coaching, and I love coaching. He was well-prepared, so I'm trying to be well-prepared, and I want the kids to be well-prepared. He loved kids, and I love kids, I love being around them," Henrickson said.
Tasked to win games with a 25-man Warriors' roster that is light on measurables, Henrickson recalls his own experience with a size disadvantage.
"Everybody looks at us, including our own players, and says, 'Man, we're not very big,' " Henrickson said.
"Well, when we played for the state championship back in '81, we were very small. We probably didn't average 185 pounds."
With that in mind, Henrickson has done his best to change the psyche of Fayetteville Christian football in 2010 by selling its students on a simple concept: "You can be small and still win."
It's a recruiting pitch Henrickson has used in the hallways of the school, where all three of his children are students, ever since he volunteered to coach the team last winter, hoping to use his own experiences to reinstill belief in a slumping program.
"Terry Sanford had the same situation at one time. When they weren't winning, it was hard to get players to come. Now, you say, 'Terry Sanford,' and they want to go," Henrickson said.
"I've spent the last eight months trying to convince boys to play that were already here and that have talent by convincing them that we can give them the tools to win."